The Clinton Inaugural.

Assessment Of Speech

Lots Of Sonority, Little Resonance

January 21, 1997|By Michael Tackett, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — His name is now spoken in the same sentence with that of Franklin Roosevelt. His approval ratings match those of Ronald Reagan near his peak. Yet for all his accomplishments, William Jefferson Clinton on Monday began his second term with a lot left to prove.

His inaugural address afforded him a lofty place to start, with its institutionally muscular stage and unrivaled sense of pageantry focused on one person and one office.

The setting also raised the expectations for what Clinton would say. He could not summon the nation to respond to a single, rallying cause, such as war or Depression,

His challenge was to frame this as a momentous time, one that could inspire passion and hope among the American people, affording him a place in history as a worthy steward of that time.

Clinton chose an obvious construct--the close of a century-- around which to frame the nation's challenges. He spoke forcefully about the dramatic changes that occurred during the times of Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt and suggested that the end of what has come to be known as the American Century presented more abundant potential.

As vivid as he was about the prospect for that potential, he was spare about how he wanted to lead the nation to achieve it. His appeals were largely to the spirit.

To be sure, Clinton faced the burden of how to be impressive in a relatively good and peaceful time and of how to move an often cynical public that is increasingly hard to impress.

In matters of style, he met that challenge. He has a preacher's rich sense of cadence and rhythm, and even his critics acknowledge his ability to perform.

On matters of substance, the speech was uneven. He tried to ring turns of phrase ("a land of new promise," "keep our old democracy forever young"), but he did not produce the sort of language that is likely to endure.

Clinton, the first Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to be elected to a second term, continued to offer a course that buries the activist form of government that FDR's administration fostered. He offered no New Deal, instead arguing that Americans must rely far more on personal responsibility and far less on government for assistance and growth.

"Once again, we have resolved for our time a great debate over the role of government," Clinton said. He then exhibited his split-the-difference tendency that has emboldened his detractors. "Today we can declare: Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution.

"We--the American people--we are the solution."

He said that "we need a new government for a new century--humble enough not to try to solve all our problems for us, but strong enough to give us the tools to solve our problems for ourselves; a government that is smaller, lives within its means, and does more with less."

On one issue, race relations, Clinton stood resolute, presenting it as perhaps the greatest challenge for the country. "The divide of race has been America's constant curse," he said. He also strongly suggested that racism lay behind the hard-line politics of some social conservatives when he spoke of "prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction. . . .

"We cannot, we will not, succumb to the dark impulses that lurk in the far regions of the soul, everywhere."

Elsewhere, in part because of the times, in part because of the want-to-please-everyone dimensions of his personality, Clinton presented a gauzy vision of a feel-good land of safe streets, miracle medicines and burgeoning economic prosperity, offering himself as a healer in chief.

In one of the speech's more inspired lines he said, "In the end, all the world's wealth and a thousand armies are no match for the strength and decency of the human spirit." Quoting the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, he urged the governing class to put aside bickering, saying "it is wrong to waste the precious gift of time. . ."

Clinton fell short, however, in completing the thought as to how he would work to bring this all about.

He also could not resist a metaphor that served him well during his campaign: a bridge to the 21st Century. That only served to reinforce the campaign nature of his speech to some, a dramatic illustration of how, for Clinton, governing and campaigning are an unconsciously seamless web.

In his second term, the first president from the Baby Boom generation will face pressing situations for which words alone will be insufficient. He faces potentially explosive developments in China, North Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Russia and the Middle East.

He also will be confronting pressures at home over the federal budget, how welfare reform is implemented and what to do about cherished entitlement programs.

On top of it all, he enters his second term under a cloud of scandal. The Supreme Court is expected to rule in June whether a sexual harassment suit can proceed against him; an independent counsel could issue indictments of people in or very near the White House; and the fundraising tactics of the Democratic Party will receive high-profile scrutiny in February by a Republican-controlled investigative committee.

Clinton's first term ended with a twist.

His most sweeping policy initiative, health-care reform, flamed out in failure, but his economic proposals helped to leave Americans feeling better about themselves and as good about their president as the felt the day he took office four years ago.

The second four years is about footprints, and whether Clinton will leave any.